Bartlett Arboretum Silver Educational Center, Stamford, CT:
I spotted this Autocall 4100ES at an apartment building that’s in the final stages of construction near my house. This is the first Autocall-branded system I’ve seen, and it’s the first time I’ve come across a 4100ES with the touchscreen display option.
Autocall has become increasingly common in my area. I think they are starting to take off now.
Station Sports Complex,
Mandan,ND
Note: This is a large sports complex that was built around 2017 to replace various other outdated sports facilities throughout the city. It has a gymnastics area, two hockey arenas, and one outdoor football field.
Panel: Siemens FireFinder XLS with voice evac
Notification Appliances: Most of the building has Siemens SE-HMC-R speaker strobes but the hockey arenas and gymnastics area have Siemens S-15WR 15w speakers and ZR-MC-R strobes.
Detectors: Siemens addressable smoke detectors (only outside of the elevator as this is a fully sprinklered building).
Pull Stations: Siemens HMS-D pull stations.
Pretty much every new 4100ES system made within the past decade will have it’s smart touchscreen rather than the old style with a basic LCD with some control buttons on it. Although an Autocall branded version of the 4100ES definitely is a rare find.
The colour touchscreen is a fairly recent option for the 4100ES, as the press release for the ES TSD on Johnson Controls’ website is dated September 2020. I’ve seen countless older (non-touchscreen) InfoAlarm displays on 4100Us and 4100ESs—they have indeed been around since the 2000s—but this is the first time I’ve come across the newer colour touchscreen in person. I’ve seen very few photos/videos of panels with ES TSDs in the wild.
Found this at my local Petco
St Catherine of Siena Parish Event Center, Trumbull, CT:
The Rt. 128 train station in Westwood, MA still has its’ original Simplex 4100 voice-evac system form 1999 in use, with a few replacement initiating devices. The panel is in one of the main entrance vestibules, and has a newer Johnson Controls service sticker on it.
The alarm signals in the station building are Simplex horizontal 4903 speaker/strobes. The pull stations are largely Simplex single-action 2099-9795s, but I saw a couple of replacement 4099-9001 single-action pulls and a replacement 4099-9006 dual-action pull (with LED indicator). The smoke detectors are 4098-9714 TrueAlarms; while most are the early version with the somewhat shiny head, there was also a newer model with the opaque white head.
The parking garage and train platforms have Space Age TVMAA speakers on A32 strobe plates and Simplex 2099-9138 pull stations (Sigcom rebrand) with Stopper II covers.
The Blue Hills Regional Technical School in Canton, MA was built in 1963 and added onto in 1976, and currently has a Notifier NFS2-3030 system. I didn’t see any traces of whatever the old system(s) were, but given the adjacent college building used to be part of the high school and was built in 1976 with a Standard Electric Time system, I’m guessing the rest of the campus also had that at the time.
The school’s Notifier system was installed around 2018-19, and it actually kind of unusual in that it has a mix of horns and voice-evac! Not the typical kind of setup where there’s voice-evac in high-occupancy areas like the gymnasium and auditorium, but some random occurrences of horn/strobes and speaker/strobes in several areas. There’s an NCA-2 annunciator in the main entrance vestibule, and the alarm signals are a mix of System Sensor P2RL horn/strobes and SPSRL speaker/strobes. Outside the main entrance is a SpectrAlert Advance SPSRK speaker/strobe, and in the main entrance next to the annunciator is a P2RL horn/strobe! Generally, the hallways, large rooms and classrooms have speaker/strobes, but there are also a few random horn/strobes in hallways and in offices. (They can’t be remote strobes, because they have the sounder grille on them.)
The pull stations are NBG-12LXs, and not surprisingly, they have Stopper II covers over them. The smoke detectors are FSP-851s on the later cone-shaped base.
As I already mentioned, the building that now serves as a satellite campus for my college also had a Notifier NFS2-3030 system installed, but this was in the mid-2010s, and it’s all horn/strobes (mostly P2R SpectrAlert Advances, but at least a couple that failed later on were replaced with P2RLs), except for the restrooms having remote strobes.
ACME Markets, Greenwich, CT (former A&P):
This system is super weird, and it just gets weirder! Originally, the panel was an EST2, the backup panel was a Fire-Lite MS-5012 (mandated by A&P), the pulls were SIGA-270s or 270-SPOs, and the notification appliances were Integrity horn/strobes.
Now, the panel has been replaced with an ES-50x and the old communicator panel still remains:
The pull stations are now BG-12s:
The notification devices are still the same:
Kirkwood Mall- Bismarck, ND
This is the area’s largest mall, but that’s not saying too much. It is only one floor. This mall was built in the 1970s-80s and has only ever gone through one system upgrade.
Old System (1970’s-2021):
Panel: Unknown 70’s-80’s conventional Edwards panel
Notification Appliances: Edwards 890 series horn/strobes
Pull Stations: Edwards 270-SPO’s
Detectors: Unknown, but probably old Edward’s conventional smoke detectors
New System (2021-Current):
Panel: Siemens FireFinder XLS with voice evac
Notification Appliances: Rebranded versions of Wheelock LED3 Speaker/Strobes and E90 remote speakers
Pull Stations: Siemens HMS-S addressable pull stations
Detectors: Siemens addressable smoke detectors
Interesting Note: There are no alarms from the mall’s main system in any of the stores.
It looks like the MS-5012 is still powered. Is it still mandated as a backup? How does it function as a backup?
Personally, I have no idea about how it works as a backup, but every ACME that was a former A&P in the Connecticut area has a main panel and the Fire-Lite communicator with an Albertson’s and/or A&P asset tag stuck to it.
Pretty sure the second photo you posted isn’t necessary as it doesn’t show any part of the system.
If you can I’d (quite literally) aim for the devices when taking photos: that’s all we here really need to see (including getting as close as you can without getting in trouble).
That ceiling-mount Genesis being wall-mounted is quite unusual (even if the optic design might allow it to be used in either location).
The second photo was meant to be of the system, but it was a Live Photo, so for some reason it stopped it on that frame even though I took a pic of the device.
Here are 2 more pics. My question is why do they have a strobe up high and a strobe down low as well? Kind of seems redundant.
Maybe for adequate visual coverage if the room is quite tall.
That’s possible. But why would they put the speaker strobes so high up then?
